Hunting for Bigfoot: N.C. expert stakes out the forest

Mike Greene is nationally recognized as an expert Bigfoot investigator.

UWHARRIE NATIONAL FOREST, N.C. -- Bigfoot on video in the North Carolina mountains?

A Salisbury man says it's true, and he's been chasing the controversial creature for more than 20 years.

Mike Greene is nationally recognized as an expert Bigfoot investigator, so we went along with him one night in search of Bigfoot.

It is dark, so dark you can see the stars and hear the crickets chanting all around.

"It's the anticipation of boogeymen in the darkness, people are scared of the dark," said Greene.

We are miles from anything, a little more than an hour from Charlotte at a secret location in the Uwharrie National Forest.

"Every time it's, 'This could be the night,' " Greene says.

We are here, hunting Bigfoot.

"It's the proverbial needle in the haystack. It really is," says Greene. "My theory is, do it enough and eventually our paths are going to cross and that's finally what happened."

Greene says he's seen Sasquatch a handful of times in the 20 years he's been on the hunt.

"Right over my head I heard two deep, I call them 'Darth Vader breaths,' " says Green. "That got my attention in a hurry."

Greene says he even caught the creature on video in this same forest once.

"There it was, eight or nine feet tall, just like in the movies, walking sideways to me, boom, boom, boom."

The 68-year-old is now widely known and recognized in Bigfoot circles and often helps investigate claims about sightings. He says he knows some people think he's crazy, but he isn't.

Greene is a retired state fraud investigator. He has his master's degree in behavioral psychology and admits chasing Bigfoot is a little off the beaten path.

"It is the most ludicrous hobby I can possibly think of," he said.

But he insists he's legitimate.

"I'm not the village idiot here and I'm an extremely skeptical person by nature, and as I said, until I actually saw one myself -- no matter what all these other people told me -- I didn't believe it for sure," he explains. "But it's true and it's hard to believe, but it's true."

He says it was years and hundreds of trips across the U.S. and Canada before his first sighting. Over time, he has perfected his hunting technique.

He estimates he's spent $75,000 on high-tech equipment like night vision goggles, cameras and even infrared illuminators. He brought all of it as we headed into the forest and set up what looks like an abandoned camp.

"The idea is to set up a campsite with some bait on it and then have a thermal recording from a distance and then leave, go away."

He says the creatures sometimes travel as a family.

"The women, you can tell they're women, they have great big breasts and they're big and hairy and they're usually dark brown or black," he says.

He knows that even with the brief video of what he says is a Bigfoot in the Uwharrie forest, there are a lot of doubters.

"Most people don't take it particularly seriously, and I don't blame them."

So his quest continues. He says he's not looking to go down in history books as the man who proved that Bigfoot exists. He would like to be the person who helps people realize Bigfoot is real but doubts it will happen.